Sunday, January 29, 2017
Monday,January 23, 2017

Our what would be July in St. George, is rather lovely.  It is raining and temperatures have been in the upper 70's.  We are so thankful to have our comfortable little flat nestled among our many Catholic neighbors.

After skyping with our children I did some mending for our 93 year old next door neighbor and then indexed the huge binder of Primary class pictures, Gospel Art, to make it easier to find what teachers need.

Tuesday, January 24, 2017

In Seminary today I taught a talk President Uchtdorf gave at a BYU devotional in 2003 titled "The Wind Beneath Your Wings".  We get to choose in life whether we scratch with the chickens in their pen, or fly with the eagles.  He talked quite a bit about the Wright Brothers which I told them, Sheila 1:verse 1's opinion, flight was an inspired gift to man in order to further the speed and ability to dfo missionary work throughout the world.

Elder Berger has had a toothache for a week so today we returned to the dentist he visited once before.  They have a couple of humorous pictures on their wall, I guess to encourage proper dental care.  We have seen quite a few here with missing teeth.  Elder Berger needs a root canal.

Dr Anubhav Verma, his assistant, and yours truly before the work started. I didn't feel up to an "after" picture. He is an excellent dentist, however.

These guys have not been to the dentist lately. No teeth = no dentist.

Wednesday, January 25, 2017

We had a downpour today.  It is interesting here as there are very, very few sprinkler systems.  The area depends on Mother Nature for water.  Most lawns are pretty stressed looking but after a rain like we have had over the past couple of days, they green up quite nicely.

Thursday,  January 26, 2017

In Seminary Elder Berger played a talk by S. Michael Wilcox about the Pearl of Great Price, Moses 1.  In his comments he mentioned that sometimes we don't get an answer when we think we should and why is that.  He said in his experience it is because in teaching us, the Lord needs a pocket in us to put the further light and knowledge and sometimes we have not yet created that pocket in us for him to use.  I really liked that idea.  I guess it would be like trying to explain Einstein's theory of relativity to a child who had never heard of science.  Certain steps and evolution in our spiritual learning processes are needed. 

Today is Australia Day.  It celebrates the anniversary of the 1788 arrival of the First Fleet of British ships at Port Jackson, NSW and the raising of the  Flag of Great Britain at Sydney Cove by Governor Arthur Phillip.  President Sully needed Elder Berger to assist him with some branch business in Inverell so after Seminary and District Training meeting by phone, Elder Berger left for Inverell and Is stayed behind to work on next I forgot it was Australia Day and left the flat to do a little shopping for Primary and was greeted within a few minutes with a downpour of rain.  I wasted my time because the stores were closed for Australia Day.  Here is my first selfie.

Tonight we joined the Smiths who invited us to eat bogan 'Straya Day' dinner with them in celebration of Australia Day.  Some of the traditional bogun  (which translated is "red-neck" to us), foods he made for us were:  oysters, Chiko Rolls, pie'n peas, mushed peas, (cooked frozen peas, blended with cream and flavorings which goes on the meat pie)prawns (hard for me to eat something with eyes)and lamb cutlets followed by lamingtons, Weis bars and Jaffas. candy which looked like orange m'ms with chocolate inside about the size of m&m almonds, and tasted like American sixlets candy,  and Australian mango soda.

We had a lovely time and ate until we were as full as a doctor's wallet (an expression common here for very full). 

The young Elders, Sheila, and the Smiths

Friday, January 27, 2017

Our friends, the Pierces, are leaving for home February 1 so we met them again in Gunnedah for lunch.  We have really enjoyed them and hope we can keep in touch once we are all back in the U.S.

The ubiquitous tennis courts of Australia are visible here but I never see anyone actually playing tennis on any of them. I am surprised, tennis must have been more popular when all of these courts were built.

Our last lunch with the Pierces before they return home was at a hotel restaurant that had a bar inside of it. We had to order our lunch at the bar. Don't tell President.